Comunitae Funds 10 Loans In First Month, Signs Up 5,000 Users

P2P Lending News — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 06:05:39 +0000

Comunitae, the leading Spanish P2P lending company, recently announced in their July newsletter that they had funded 10 loans during their first month of activity. Comunitae launched in June after about a month of beta testing. Ever since their launch, Comunitae has been mobbed by the Spanish media, including print, radio, and television.

Other statistics offered by Comunitae were that on average, 50 loan requests are available for bidding from a pool of 780 borrowers. 645 investors are ready to lend, primarily from Madrid (where Comunitae is located), Barcelona, and Valencia. According to Comunitae’s twitter feed, the company just reached the 5,000 user milestone on Friday.

Comunitae, whose name combines “comunidad” (“community” in Spanish) and “TAE” (Spain’s equivalent of APR), is a fairly close facsimile of U.S. peer lender Prosper. Borrowers request loans from their community by creating public loan requests, and lenders place bids to participate and set interest rates. Borrower credit is ranked from A to C, and interest rates are in the 7-12% range.

Another social lending company in Spain called Lubbus has launched a beta site, but it is unclear whether actual peer-to-peer lending is taking place, or just testing.

Comunitae’s February Newsletter Promises Launch Soon

P2P Lending News — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 21:11:56 +0000

Comunitae, the first announced peer to peer lending site in Spain, upped the ante in their February 2009 Newsletter, saying “falta muy poco” (the wait is almost over) before Comunitae can become the first P2P lending site to launch in Spain.

The newsletter says everything is ahead of schedule, and that they are finalizing details for the launch in the second trimester [of 2009, presumably]. Also included is a link to a Twitter account for Comunitae (with two tweets to date), the promise of a soon-to-come blog, and a list of the company’s management team. The team includes a CEO, CFO/biz dev, Operations, Technology, Credit/Risk, and Communications. Funnily enough, the spanish title for the director of communications is “Director de Comunicación y Community Manager”. They don’t translate “Community Manager”.

Comunitae is racing against Lubbus to be the first social lending site in Spain. With 2 million Euros in funding, Comunitae probably has more resources; Lubbus has not announced any funding to date.

P2P Lending News » Spain

Comunitae Funds 10 Loans In First Month, Signs Up 5,000 Users

Comunitae’s February Newsletter Promises Launch Soon